Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Comics and Animatics

Like most kids who grew up before video games, I read comic books and watched cartoons. I evolved in my tastes, from the basic good guy vs bad guy super heroes in tights to ruthless bandit barbarians to the anti-heroes of the Watchmen.
The thing I like most of the comic world evolution is the incredible range of story telling, writing and of course the art work, which is the same for animation.
My cousin who is an amazing writer and producer in Hollywood (NCIS Los Angeles, Jag, E.R. to name a few) was writing a script for a live action series and asked if I could do a comic book teaser. I immediately jumped at the chance.
I can't go into it too much (confidentiality things) but it's set in WWII. I'm a history buff so I really got into researching the uniforms, equipment and settings.
The challenge was converting a script for live action to comic book.
That and doing it using a Wacom tablet and Photoshop. I prefer traditional pencil and paper but thought this would be faster. Took a few pages before I got the hang of it. Went for a more realistic rough feel over the more traditional north American style in hopes of the viewers easier seeing it as live action.
After that was done (10 pages) my brother (also an artist/animator and director) took the comic and made it into an animatic which I have included below.

So here's a few pages ofwhat I've done and the animatic made by my brother.
Hope you like it.